Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members. JOHN BINDER

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Job cuts mount as global economy falters

By Gabriel Black 22 January 2016

Major corporations around the world announced sharp cuts in their labor forces this past week. The job reductions come amidst growing signs of a general economic crisis, as commodity prices and share values plummet.

Leading the way in job cuts are energy companies, particularly in the oil and gas industries, which have been hit hard by the collapse in oil prices.

Schlumberger, the largest oil technology and drilling company, announced Thursday that it would eliminate 10,000 positions, roughly ten percent of the firm’s workforce. The company’s stock has been trading at near four-year lows this past week. In order to please investors, the company announced the mass layoffs alongside a $10 billion stock buyback program to boost its stock price.
Royal Dutch Shell reported that it would increase its planned 7,500 job cuts this year to 10,300. The downsizing is bound up with Shell’s acquisition of the BG group, a smaller British oil company. The cut totals ten percent of the workforce of the merged companies. Other energy company cuts include Southwestern Energy Corporation (1,100), Noble Corporation (100), and Potash (430).

While job cuts have been sharpest in the oil and gas sectors, the general downturn in primary resources has soured profit forecasts and spurred layoffs throughout the economy.

The German Manager Magazin reports that Volkswagen is considering slashing up to 10,000 jobs as part of a new cost-cutting drive. In addition to the impact of the general tumult in the world economy, Volkswagen is reeling from the exposure of its rigging of car emissions. Volkswagen intends to place the burden of the scandal squarely on the backs of the workers, in part by increasing productivity by ten percent this year.

On Tuesday, health industry giant Johnson & Johnson announced 3,000 job cuts at its medical device division. That is about five percent of the firm’s global workforce. The company hopes to save $1 billion annually from the cut, which will be imposed over the next two years.

Pearson, the world’s largest education publisher, announced Thursday that it would shed 4,000 jobs, roughly 10 percent of its workforce. Many of these job cuts will fall in the company’s operations in the United States. The firm’s shares declined substantially after it announced three months ago that it would not make a profit in 2015. The firm is the co-owner of Penguin Random House.

Barclays, the British investment bank, announced that it would cut 1,200 jobs and close offices around the world, particularly in Asia. Virgin Media, another British company, will cut 900 jobs, primarily in London and Birmingham.

These job cuts follow other mass job reductions in Europe, including 6,500 at General Electric’s European operations, 6,000 by the French nuclear group Areva, 5,800 at British Airways, and 1,000 at Tata Steel in Britain.

Job losses are mounting as well in China. While growth continues in some sectors, unemployment is increasing amongst workers in the steel industry and other sectors that have been sharply hit by the collapse of commodity prices. China International Capital Corporation estimated that 3 million workers would be laid off in the next few years in the coal, steel, electrolytic aluminum, cement and glass industries due to overcapacity. Professor Liu Erduo, a labor economist at Renmin University, predicts that the unemployment rate in China will rise from 5.1 to at least 6.1 percent this year.

The cascade of job cuts comes as prominent figures attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland predict a grim future for the world economy. William White, chairman of the review committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, stated, “The situation is worse than it was in 2007.” White warned that this time around, the world’s central banks will not be in a position to bail out the financial markets. “Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up,” he said.WASHINGTON EXAMINER

More people are applying for unemployment insurance, a first sign of weakness in part of the labor market.

"The percentage of the adult population that is fully employed is at its lowest level in 30 years."

"The
president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 “recovery” is the
weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have
been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the
unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of
people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a
decent-paying job."

January 16, 2016

Empty Chairs and the Potemkin Presidency

On
Tuesday, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union
address, marking his final year in office. News outlets, politicians
and political pundits have provided and will continue to provide their
opinions and assessments of the content of his address, his invitees,
and the now famous empty chair. But as we enter the president's final
year, it's time to provide more important assessment and review: the
legacy of President Obama.

Perhaps
the best way to evaluate that legacy is to look to an interesting story
from Russian history. According to Russian lore, a man by the name of
Grigory Potemkin erected a series of fake village settlements along the
bank of the Dnieper River in an effort to fool Catherine the Great's
entourage during her tour of the Crimea in 1787.

Potemkin
and Catherine were well known to be romantically involved, and one of
the "perks" of his position was a governorship appointment of the Crimea
region. Crimea had been decimated by a previous war, and Potemkin was
tasked with rebuilding the area. In an effort to secure support for a
pending war against the Ottoman Empire, Catherine made a six-month trip
to "New Russia."

As
Catherine's party of ambassadors moved down the river, Potemkin would
be one step ahead, setting up the mobile villages on the banks of the
Dnieper, and then Potemkin would have his men dress up as villagers to
interact with the party. Once the visitors left, Potemkin and his men
would disassemble the village and travel through the night to set up the
next village.

In
modern politics, the exploits of Potemkin (and his Potemkin villages)
have come to describe a situation constructed to give the outward
appearance that things are much better than they really are.

While
the empty chair was meant, no doubt, to pay tribute to gun violence
victims, the president may have ironically given America the most
succinct assessment of the legacy of the current president. Obama is
the Potemkin President.

While
the Potemkin label has been applied at various times to policies or
actions the president has taken during his two terms, a close
examination of major areas of his presidency shows a pattern much more
pervasive than just a few isolated presidential actions.

To
illustrate the point, here are just five prime examples –
racial/political environment, Wall Street, health care, foreign
relations, and the economy – of where the president touts his successes –
Potemkin successes that mask a much less flattering reality.

1. Obama's Brand as the Great Unifier. While his approval rating remains slightly under 50 percent according to Gallup
(which is much better than his predecessor), the promise of hope and
change has been more of lost hope and change as it relates to America
being more unified.

The
racial and political climate in America is at a boiling point.
Incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore, the Black Panthers polling
incidents, and the battle over immigration are just a few illustrations
of the pent up frustration of Americans because of a president who
talked unity but sowed the seeds of contention with his penchant for
divisive rhetoric.

Further,
Washington remains deadlocked. And while a healthy part of the blame
lies at the feet of Republicans for this, a real leader would have found
ways to build bridges and consensus rather than ramming through
legislation that passed only along party lines or turning to the
executive order every time he failed to get his way.

2. The Clean-Up of Wall Street.
Upon taking office, President Obama was quick to blame former
President Bush for the latter's failure to check Wall Street, but he had
no issue taking credit for the passage of a litany of regulations,
including Dodd-Frank, that were going to clean up Wall Street.

Is
Wall Street really "cleaned up"? We need only look to the president's
own party to find the Potemkin village in this situation. At a recent Cato event, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren noted that nine trillion in tax dollars
went out the "back door" to just three financial institutions at a rate
amounting to nothing those institutions could get anywhere else.
Instead of solving the problem, the "too big to fail" banks are now
even bigger and even more risky. And according to Mark Calabria's
insider federal sources, Congress has no idea if any of the large banks
are currently insolvent.

3. The Affordable Care Act.
One of President Obama's biggest policy objectives when he took office
was to reform the health care system, so that all Americans could have
access to affordable health care. As such, the passage of the
Affordable Care Act has been touted as one of the president's greatest
policy achievements.

From
the infamous campaign promise of "If you like your health plan you can
keep it" to continuing delays in the implementation of various parts of
the law to costly websites and technical investments that haven't
worked, the ACA has led to one broken promise after another. Perhaps
the most Potemkin-like aspect of the ACA is that Americans are now
getting less coverage at a higher cost and are more dependent on
government assistance to pay for their new "affordable" care.

By the numbers, the average American household now depends on a $2,890 government subsidy,
according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, to help offset
the cost of rising premiums, which are poised to rise 12 to 13 percent
this year, according to ACAsignups.net. And these increases tell only
half the story. As premiums have gone up, so have deductibles. The
average American household's deductible has risen by $400 since 2010 (from $900 to $1,300),
and for small business owners, that deductible number is $1,800. It is
as if the president took a page from the cereal and cracker companies,
who kept prices "low" but reduced the amount of food in the box. As
with Obamacare, Americans were led to believe they were getting a good
deal until they starting reading the fine print on the box.

4. The Peace Prize President.
Shortly after his inauguration, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize. The president can't be blamed for the timing of the award, but
the award now stands as a rather ironic piece of evidence confirming the
Potemkin President's legacy.

A
quick look at the news in just the past year is all one needs to pull
the curtains back on what's really going on behind the village cutouts.
The Russia/Ukraine conflict continues to fester. France has endured a
horrific terror attack. North Korea appears to have conducted a
successful nuclear test. The Arab world ebbs closer to major conflict,
with continued issues in Syria and ISIS conflicts in Iraq. Finally,
trust in the current president's foreign policy in the Arab world is at
historic lows according to research by the Pew Foundation.

5. The Obama-Led Recovery.
Based on his 2012 campaign, President Obama was responsible for
helping to pull the U.S. out of one of the worst recessions since the
Great Depression. In fact, the president just a few months ago made the
claim on The Daily Show that "by every metric, the economy is better than when he took office."

While
some numbers have improved slightly from the bottom, the underlying
fundamentals of the economy tell a different story. According to Gallup
research, small business growth is in a death spiral, and the U.S. now ranks 12th among developed nations in business start-up activity. The percentage of the adult population that is fully employed is at its lowest level in 30 years.
The small growth we have seen pales in comparison to the economic
recovery initiated by Reagan that didn't require trillions in new debt.
Finally, the Fed has been forced to keep the gas pedal down on its
quantitative easing strategy, which may be the clearest sign that there
has been no real recovery.

This
list could be significantly larger. But each additional example would
only confirm the original premise that the best way to summarize the
leadership legacy of our current president is that he would have made
Potemkin proud.

Obama’s Legacy? Dismal and Declining Labor Force Participation

I normally enjoy working for the Cato Institute since it’s a principled and effective organization.
But every so often, my job requires an unpleasant task, and watching the State-of-the-Union Address as part of Cato’s live-tweeting program counts as one my least enjoyable experiences since joining the team.

But
let’s make lemonade out of lemons by looking at lessons that can be
learned from Obama’s speech. The most jarring part of the evening was
when Obama bragged about the American economy.
Since we’re suffering through the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, that was rather bizarre.

Moreover, being proud that we’re doing better than Europe is akin to getting a participation ribbon in a soccer league for kids.

And
the chest thumping about the unemployment rate was very misplaced since
that piece of data only looks good because so many Americans have given
up on finding a job.

I’ve pontificated on that issue before and cited the Labor Department’s overall data, but let’s dig a little deeper to fully understand why Obama should have apologized rather than patted himself on the back.

Here’s the employment/population ratio for the prime, working-age population of those between 25 and 54 years of age.

As
you can see, this ratio has improved a bit over the past five years,
but it appears that there’s very little hope that the overall employment
situation will ever recover to where it was before the recession.
At least not with current policies.
Here’s another way
of looking at the same data. It’s labor force participation by age. The
lines don’t seem that far apart, but a 3-4 percentage point decline
across age groups adds up to millions of people no longer productively
employed.
Last but not least, here’s another way of approaching this data.
We have a chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank showing the number of working-age people not in the labor force.
There are two takeaways from this chart.

First, it’s clear that the problem started well before Obama.

But it’s also clear that the problem has gotten much worse during his tenure.

According
to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve
of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United
States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash
according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment,
the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.

Obama’s final State of the Union: Lies, evasions and threats

By Patrick Martin 13 January 2016

The
final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President
Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American
political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social
question.

Obama
evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people
in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of
economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of
his television audience—and went unchallenged by the millionaire
politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

Summing
up what he called “the progress of these past seven years,” Obama gave
first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in
generations.” The so-called “recovery” has been a bonanza for corporate
profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For
the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has
been a disaster.

By
most social indices, the American people are worse off in January 2016
than when Obama took office seven years ago. The real wages of working
people have fallen, social services have deteriorated, pension benefits
have been gutted, and cities such as Detroit and San Bernardino have
been forced into bankruptcy.

According
to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve
of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United
States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash
according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment,
the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.

In
27 states, not a single county has recovered fully from the 2008 crash
and the deep economic slump that followed. These include such major
states as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New
Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Obama, however,
painted a picture of nearly unblemished economic advance, declaring,
“The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most
durable economy in the world.” He boasted, “We’re in the middle of the
longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14
million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s;
an unemployment rate cut in half.”

BLOG:
AS OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY SABOTAGE OUR BORDERS, E-VERIFY AND
REFUSE TO ENFORCE LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS!

The
president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 “recovery” is the
weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have
been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the
unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of
people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a
decent-paying job.

He went on, tellingly, to
cite the auto industry as a symbol of success, declaring that it “just
had its best year ever.” This perfectly expresses the utter blindness,
not just of Obama, but of the entire political establishment. The “best
year ever” was for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, which enjoyed
record profits, not for the auto workers who produced those profits.

Real
wages for auto workers have dropped sharply since the Obama White House
forced through a 50 percent cut in wages for all new hires as part of
the bankruptcy reorganization of the industry in 2009. Mass discontent
among auto workers was expressed at the end of 2015 in the rejection of
contracts at Fiat-Chrysler and Nexteer, a major supplier, and in
widespread demands for strike action, smothered by Obama’s stooges in
the United Auto Workers union.

“Anyone claiming that
America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” Obama concluded.
The social position of the American working class has, in fact, suffered
a dramatic decline, through the combined efforts of the corporate
bosses, the unions and the two capitalist parties, the Democrats and
Republicans.

The president conceded that economic
inequality has grown in the United States, but he described it as the
outcome of long-term trends such as globalization and automation, as
though the policies of his administration—bailouts for Wall Street,
budget cuts and wage cuts for workers—had nothing to do with it.

In
the seven years since the financial crash, brought on, as he admitted,
by “recklessness on Wall Street,” not a single banker or speculator has
been prosecuted or jailed. On the contrary, the billionaires have
greatly increased their wealth, gobbling up 95 percent of all new income
since Obama entered the White House.

Obama
listed a few other policy “successes,” claiming that “we reformed our
health care system, and reinvented our energy sector… we delivered more
care and benefits to our troops and veterans.” He was referring,
however, to a series of social disasters: the reactionary attack on
health benefits for workers and their families known as Obamacare; the
devastation of Appalachia and other energy-producing regions; and the
abuse of ex-soldiers, wounded in body and mind, by the Veterans
Administration.

Obama sought to defend the foreign
policy record of his administration from criticism, mainly from the
Republican right, where demands are being raised for military escalation
in the Middle East and stepped-up attacks on democratic rights at home
in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

While he claimed
to reject an American role as the world’s policeman, he nonetheless
boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on
Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than
the next eight nations combined.”

He continued, “Our
troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,”
winning the bipartisan standing ovation that always accompanies any
mention of American soldiers engaged in combat overseas.

Obama
indulged in the glorification of killing that has become an essential
part of the degraded spectacle that passes for political discourse in
America. Describing the US war against the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria, he claimed, “With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out
their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons.”

He
called on Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military
Force against ISIS, but vowed to wage war with or without legislative
approval. The leaders of ISIS, he proclaimed, “will learn the same
lessons as terrorists before them. If you doubt America’s commitment—or
mine—to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of
al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year…”

Then
he declared, in language that will be noted by nations all over the
world, that when it comes to waging war against potential adversaries,
“our reach has no limit.”

Obama concluded his speech
with an appeal to his Republican opponents to work with his
administration and pull back from the extreme anti-immigrant and
anti-Muslim rhetoric that has characterized the contest for the
Republican presidential nomination.

In a clear
reference to Donald Trump, he argued that “we need to reject any
politics that targets people because of race or religion. This is not a
matter of political correctness, but understanding what makes us
strong.”

Obama was making an argument, not so much that
racism and bigotry are intrinsically wrong, but that they make it more
difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominant world role.
“When a politician insults Muslims,” he said, “it makes it harder to
achieve our goals.”

The lottery and social despair in America

9 January 2015

This mania, so generally
condemned, has never been properly studied. No one has realized that it
is the opium of the poor. Did not the lottery, the mightiest fairy in
the world, work up magical hopes? The roll of the roulette wheel that
made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold and delights did not last
longer than a lightning flash; whereas the lottery spread the
magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days. Where is the
social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy for five
days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that
civilization holds?
Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842

The
jackpot in the US Powerball lottery has hit $800 million, since there
were no winners in Wednesday’s drawing. In the current round, which
began on December 2, over 431 million tickets have been sold, a figure
substantially larger than America’s population.

Go into
any corner store in America and you will see workers of every age and
race waiting in line to buy lottery tickets. With the current round,
the lines are longer than ever. Americans spend over $70 billion on
lottery tickets each year. In West Virginia, America’s second-poorest
state, the average person spent $658.46 on lottery tickets last year.

Powerball
players pick six random numbers when they purchase their tickets, with
a certain percentage of sales going to the jackpot. If no winning
ticket is sold, the jackpot rolls over to the next round.

The
totals for the Mega Millions and Powerball national lotteries have
been growing every year. This year’s jackpot has eclipsed 2012’s record
of $656.5 million, the $390 million payout in 2007 and the $363
million prize in 2000. The jackpots have grown in direct proportion to
ticket sales.

State-run gambling programs such as
Powerball have been promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike as a
solution to state budget shortfalls, even as the politicians slash
taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and gut social programs.
From the standpoint of government revenue, lotteries and casinos are
nothing more than a back-door regressive tax, soaking up money from the
poor in proportion to the growth of social misery.

The boom in lotteries is global. Lottery sales grew 9.9 percent worldwide in 2014, after growing 4.9 percent in 2013.

Psychology
Professor Kate Sweeny has noted that lottery sales grow when people
feel a lack of control over their lives, particularly over their
economic condition. “That feeling of self-control is very important to
psychological well-being,” Sweeny says.

There is ample
reason for American workers to feel they have no control over their
lives. According a recent survey by Bankrate.com, more than half of
Americans do not have enough cash to cover an unexpected expense of
$500 or more—roughly the price of four name-brand tires.
Some 62
percent of Americans have savings of less than $1,000, and 21 percent do
not have any savings at all. Most Americans are one medical emergency
or one spell of unemployment from financial ruin.

For
all the talk about “economic recovery” by the White House, the real
financial state of most American households is far worse than before
the 2008 financial crisis and recession. As of 2013, Americans were
almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2007, according to a recent
survey by the Pew Research Center. While a large portion of the decline
in household wealth is attributable to the collapse of the housing
bubble, falling wages and chronic mass unemployment have played major
roles.

The yearly income of a typical US household
dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between
2007 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of
consumer finances. A large share of this decline has taken place during
the so-called recovery presided over by the Obama administration.

In
addition to becoming poorer, America has become much more economically
polarized. According to a separate Pew survey, for the first time in
more than four decades “middle-income households” no longer constitute
the majority of American society. Instead, the majority of households
are either low- or high-income. Pew called its findings “a demographic
shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.

“Is the lottery the new American dream?” asked USA Today,
commenting on this month’s Powerball jackpot. The observation is truer
than the authors intended. For American workers, achieving the
“American Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming
increasingly unrealizable.
Following more than 10 million
foreclosures during the financial crisis, America’s home ownership rate
has hit the lowest level in two decades, and for young households, the
rate of home ownership is the lowest it has been since the 1960s.

For
the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100 million
on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery has
replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life. A lottery ticket
is a chance to escape to a fantasy world where money is not a
constant, nagging worry, where one is not insulted and bullied at a
low-wage job by bosses whose pay is matched only by their incompetence.
The lottery is, as Balzac aptly described it, the “opium of the poor.”

Using
the same phrase to describe religion, Marx noted that the “illusory
happiness of the people” provided by the solace of religion is, in
fact, a silent protest and distorted “demand for their real happiness.”
It is the intolerable social conditions that compel masses of people
to seek consolation in a lottery ticket that will propel them into
revolutionary struggles.

Survey finds a majority of Americans unable to pay for major unexpected expenses

By Nick Barrickman 9 January 2016

A new
survey put out by the personal finance management site Bankrate.com on
Wednesday found that more than half of Americans could not weather a
sudden financial crisis without having to borrow money from friends and
family or being forced to reduce the amount spent on other items such
as dining out, paying cable or cell phone bills, or other basic
features of a “middle class” lifestyle.

The survey,
conducted last month among a pool of 1,000 Americans in conjunction
with Princeton Survey Research Associates International, found that only
37 percent of those surveyed would be able to pay an emergency expense
of $1,000, such as an emergency room visit or the cost of repairing a
broken down vehicle, out of pocket.

Sixty-three percent
of those surveyed would not be able to cover such a sudden expense
without either cutting down on expenses elsewhere, borrowing or
resorting to credit. The survey found that nearly four in 10 Americans
had suffered such a financial setback in 2015.

“Without
an adequate rainy-day fund, we are all living on a very slippery
financial slope,” Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit
Counseling told Bankrate.com. “The unexpected, unplanned expense is
going to rear its ugly head and usually at the most inopportune
time…Things as small as a flat tire or one trip to the emergency room
can wreck the budgets of those who do not have an adequate amount in
their savings account,” she said.

For Americans making
less than $30,000 per year, only 23 percent would be able to cover such
a sudden expense on their own. This was contrasted by nearly 60 percent
of those making over $75,000 annually who could say the same. Nine
percent making $30,000 or below stated that they did not know how they
would cover such expenses, meaning that they were one expensive setback
away from personal financial ruin.

The poll comes
amid a slew of other reports detailing an immense drop in the living
standards of a significant section of the US population, a component of
the growth of social inequality more broadly.

Since
the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent economic “recovery” in
2009, 95 percent of all wealth gains have gone to the top 1 percent in
society. A report released in November by the St. Louis Federal Reserve
showed that Americans’ personal savings in 2015 were half of what the
average was in the early 1980s.

A US Federal Reserve
report released in 2014 found that nearly six in 10 Americans had lost
all or part of their savings due to the financial impact of the 2008
economic crisis, while a 2015 study by GOBankingrates.com revealed that
the majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings to their
name. A report released the Pew Research firm last month revealed that
the number of middle-income homes as a portion of the population had
largely vanished in the span of a few decades.

The
figures come as the US Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates
for banks and other financial institutions, which will likely lead to
further difficulty for individuals who rely upon credit in order to
finance their costs of living.

The expenses eating away
at the typical individual’s savings read like essential items for
living in modern society. According to Bankrate.com, the largest
expense for one-third of all Americans outside of food and shelter
consisted of utilities such as water, electricity or phone service. For
those over the age of 50, one in five cited medical bills as their
largest co

Therefore
the Visa Waiver Program should have been terminated after the terror
attacks of 9/11 yet it has continually been expanded.

It
is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations
and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party
affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action
to stop that flow of aliens into the United States.. . .The
obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so
sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the
9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply
terminating this dangerous program.

The
answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber
of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion,
now doing business as Brand USA.

The
Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the
Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to
enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.

The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.

Incredibly,
the official State Department website also provides a link, “Discover
America,” on that website which relates to the website of The Corporation for Travel Promotion, which is affiliated with the travel industries that are a part of the “Discover America Partnership.